Jumping into July!

The Gary-Miller Spotlight project has been in full swing since our Community Kickoff on 6/27/15.

 

One Tuesday 7/7/15 at 6:30PM, Miller Spotlight held its Visioning Session at the Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts (540 S Lake St Gary, IN 46403). 51 community members attended and helped create a vision to help us focus on the next stage of the Neighborhood Spotlight process, action. 

A community vision is a statement that describes where a community wants to be in the future. It also explains what the community wants to do or get done. These types of statements are usually short, with many being just one sentence. They are important because they indicate the primary goals of a community. 

Miller’s will not lay out a precise plan for how to achieve these goals, but it will outline our community objectives clearly. Its main purpose will be to orient everything our community does. From our vision it will be possible for our theme-based Action Groups to come up with the strategies and/or techniques to move forward in a very specific direction to accomplish progress in the revitalization efforts we are planning to undertake.

On July 18, members of the Miller Spotlight crew, the Miller Beach Arts & Creative District and residents at Park Shore Commons got together for a fun filled summer BBQ. Over 70 people attended and 2 professional photographers volunteered to take family pictures for anyone interested. Park Shore Commons has played an active role in the Neighborhood Spotlight process. 

On July 24, Miller and Hobart (our sister community on this project) Spotlight Steering Committees got together in a casual setting to explore Northwest Hobart. NWH is the territory covered in the Hobart Spotlight initiative. Members from both groups were able to get chat on their experiences and exchange ideas on helping revitalize their communities and the concept of collective impact as a whole. Miller and Hobart are looking forward to working together and welcoming next year’s Neighborhood Spotlight Communities into this project. 

During our visioning session a spirited discussion on community engagement occurred. IACED (who has been commissioned by the Legacy Foundation to help with the Neighborhood Spotlight process) suggested that a community discussion surrounding engagement might be beneficial to our neighborhood. So, on Monday 7/27/15 we held the first of several discussions on this subject. If you are interested in this topic, please email Jessie Renslow, via millerspotlight@gmail.com for more info. 

The next major step for our initiative is our Action Group Workshops. Please attend our morning or evening Miller Spotlight Action Group Workshop. (On Wednesday, 8/5/15 from 8-10am & 6:30-8:30pm). They will be held at the Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts 540 S. Lake St. Gary, IN 46403.

At the workshops you will get to meet your group, decide your group's schedule and get your theme's plan started. If you are undecided about joining a group please feel free to attend and see what the Neighborhood Spotlight process is all about. You don't have to live in our community, you just need to be interested in furthering the revitalization efforts. All are welcome to join! We are a Legacy Foundation initiative.

What's an Action Group? From the 4,013 comments we collected from our Miller Spotlight Community Conversations 7 themes appeared:

1. Miller's Area Context

2. Economy and Job Opportunities

3. Safety and Code Enforcement

4. Environment and Eco Tourism

5. Property

6. Education and Youth/ Child Programming

7. Transportation and Infrastructure 

(Click on any link above to sign up for an Action Group)

                                    

Community members can join Action Groups that will meet 3-6 times this summer to create plans that will address these themes and be implemented in 2016.

Do you live in NWI and/ or Chicagoland and care about Miller Beach? 

Then please come to the Miller Spotlight Action Group Workshops and Community Engagement Discussions! 

Your opinion matters!!! 

If you need to book an interview please contact our Community Builder, Jessie Renslow via millerspotlight@gmail.com.

We are conducting interviews until 10/31/15.

What's Next????

On Saturday, June 27, 2015 about 100 people attended the Miller Spotlight Community Kickoff. From 4-6pm members of the community met at St. Mary of the Lake’s Lessard Hall and listened to eleven of their neighbors explain the findings from our grassroots initiative project. 

Since February fifteen, volunteer, members of the Miller Spotlight Steering Committee have gathered 4,013 comments about Gary’s very own Miller neighborhood from vested community members. Our community Builder synthesized these comments and seven themes naturally arose from the data gathered:

1. Miler's Area Context

2. Economy and Job Opportunities

3. Safety and Code Enforcement

4. Environment and Eco Tourism

5. Property (Including Blight issues)

6. Education and Youth/ Child Programming

7. Transportation and Infrastructure 

On June 27, 2015 volunteers from the community discussed Miller's views on the above themes. They will help determine how we as a community plan to take action towards continuing to revitalize Miller. Cullen Ben-Daniel and Al Renslow presented on Miller’s Area Context, Rebecca “Becky” Wyatt covered Enconomy and Job Opportunities, Commander Rice spoke on Safety and Code Enforcement, Dr. Pete Avis talked about the Environment and Carol Smith chatted about Eco Tourism, Alicia Nunn, Rachel Veronesi and Clarence Knight conversed about Education and Youth/ Child Programming, Gene Ayers talked about the state of our property and Eric Tonk spoke about Transportation and Infrastructure. 

 

Our eleven volunteer speakers did an awesome job bringing to life the data our steering committee has gathered. They had the audience enraptured, which was quite a feat considering they were discussing data, but they were able to get folks to listen because they explained the reasoning behind their passion for the subject they presented on and why it is so important to our community.

 

A special thanks goes out to Judith Siroky for all her help and St. Mary of the Lake’s for being a great venue. Ray “The Sound Guy” was just great. He donated his services in the midst of a giant rain storm and had a smile on the whole time. Dr. Eve Battando lent her fab tech skills and projector to the event as well as helped post flyers. Mandi Renslow and Sarah Radowski were great at designing our data boards

  

To view our Kickoff PowerPoint click here. To view our Gary-Miller Spotlight Community Quality of Life Conversation Report here. (If you would like a downloadable PDF of the report email Jessie Renslow via millerspotlight@gmail.com.) Unfortunately, we had a bit of technical difficulty with our video camera, but you can view 10 minutes of footage here. 

  

SO, WHAT’S NEXT????

Our Visioning Session is the next stage of the Neighborhood Spotlight process. What is a community vision and why is it important?

A community vision is a statement that describes where a community wants to be in the future. It also explains what the community wants to do or get done. These types of statements are usually short, with many being just one sentence. These kinds of statements are important because they indicate the primary goals of a community. 

Miller’s will not lay out a precise plan for how to achieve these goals, but it will outline our community objectives clearly. Its main purpose will be to orient everything our community does. From our vision it will be possible for our theme-based Action Groups to come up with the strategies and/or techniques to move forward in a very specific direction to accomplish progress in the revitalization efforts we are planning to undertake.

At the visioning session, attendees will help construct Gary-Miller’s community vision and hopefully sign up to join Action Groups to help assess the themes presented in this quality of life study. The Action Groups will meet 3-6 times between July and September to construct plans to access each theme. Afterwards the community builder and IACED will construct a Community Plan that will be implemented in 2016.

So, please come to the Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts on 7/7/15 at 6:30pm to find out more about Miller Spotlight and where it will take our community in 2016! RSVP on Facebook here. Walk-ins welcome!!! You can sign up for an Action Group there too. You don’t have to be from Gary-Miller, or live here you just need to be invested in our revitalization efforts to participate. Your opinion matters!